When Jothi threw his weight around

Suspended IHF Secretary Shoots Off Letter To MCC Trying To Get His Men To Officiate In Murugappa Cup Matches

Chennai: K Jothikumaran, it appears, has created a fresh contorversy to establish he still controls power in Tamil Nadu hockey. Not content with being told that the Tamil Nadu Hockey Association had formed a parallel body, the former Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) secretary, has directed the organisers of the prestigious MCC-Murugappa Cup to conduct the tournament with officials of his choice.

With the sport in doldrums, Madras Cricket Club, organisers of the tournament which gets underway here from Wednesday, chose not to seek help from the TNHA, deciding instead to conduct the 10-day long invitational event by themselves.

The MCC, then were naturally stumped, when they received a directive by Jothi on August 25 mentioning the officials’ names, who have been appointed by the TNHA for the Murugappa Cup.

The tainted official who had been suspended by the Indian Olympics Association (IOA) in April on corruption charges, and ostensibly still holds the post of secretary at the TNHA, dashed off the letter to B Subramaniam, secretary of MCC with the names of the officials whom he wanted to conduct the proceedings of the matches.

But the letter from the ad-hoc committee, which is in possession with The Times of India, mentioned that in case of appointing the officials, the organising committee can use the services of the umpires/judges as per the requirements. When the MCC had chosen not to seek help from the TNHA, why was the letter sent, remains a big puzzle.

Also, the question begs: How can Jothikumaran appoint a different set of officials without seeking MCC’s permission?

“When the ad-hoc committee already had appointed a bunch of officials, why should the TNHA send a different list of officials to us? We will obey ad-hoc committee’s instructions. The letter from TNHA does not hold any value for us. We’ll use those officials who had been appointed by the ad-hoc committee,” a source at MCC told TOI.

According to Olympian Muneer Sait, the organising committee had met Aslam Khan, former convener of the ad-hoc committee in Hyderabad during the Junior Asia Cup and finalised the dates of the Murugappa Cup.

“We have directly interacted with the ad-hoc committee and it gave us permission to organise the tournament,” Sait, manager of the umpires, said.

“We’ve been conducting the event for many years now. We don’t need to take help from the state association to make the tournament a grand success,” fumed an MCC official.

Jothi, it appears, capitalised on a loophole in the correspondence between the MCC and TNHA, and moved in to his might.

The Ad-hoc committee had sent a letter to TNHA, a copy of which was also forwarded to MCC, which stated that the organising committee “may ask the state body to provide more umpires/officials.” According to the tournament director, Shakeel Qureshi, there is nothing wrong in hiring more officials with the help of the state association.

“The ad-hoc committee had appointed a tournament director, one umpires’ manager, one technical official, one judge and six umpires for the tournament. But I came to know that there are three matches in a day. You need at least three umpires to conduct a single match. In that case I need nine umpires a day. Where will the three more umpires come from? It can create huge problem for me. I can only get a clear picture once I reach there,” Qureshi, who is arriving in Chennai on Wednesday, told TOI from New Delhi.

In such a state of flux, trust someone as wily to Jothi to sense a killing. He did. Whether the sport really benefits from all this, only time will tell!